Coping with stress becomes full-time occupation

Editor's note: Part of an occasional series on the job market and the economic fallout.

Nikita McFarland was doing OK.

Nineteen years old, with a new baby, she was working in customer service at a store in Quaker Bridge Mall, paying her bills and planning for the future.

But on Christmas Eve she lost her job after a petty dispute over lunch schedules, she said. Since then she's found it surprisingly hard to find a new position.

She attends job training classes, takes care of her baby, and doesn't have much else to do.

"My life is in shambles now," she said last week as she left Mercer County's career center on South Clinton Avenue. "If I wasn't a happy person, I'd be pulling my hair out."

Fortunately, she has family nearby, she said.

"When I'm crying I can call up somebody," said McFarland, a Trenton resident. "If you're feeling that way, just call someone. If you hold all that in, one day you'll just pop."

As the job market shrinks, more people are "popping" these days or at least showing signs of stress, according to mental health professionals.

Feeling down when you're out of work is hardly unusual, but the difference now is that every day headlines scream that the economy is collapsing, and even highly qualified people are struggling to get re-employed.

Trinity Counseling Service in Princeton has been seeing elevated numbers of people arriving at its doors in crisis, said the executive director, the Rev. Peter K. Stimpson.

The organization's counselors used to see two or three people in crisis every six months, but around Christmas the number hit a peak of two every day and it still remains relatively high, he said.

"I had one this morning," Stimpson said on Thursday. "The anxiety is off the chart. Anyone in their mid-30s or younger has not really experienced anything like this in our economy. They're used to our economy continually growing."

Frustration and fear

Phil Fiorentino of Allentown has been looking for work for three and a half months, since he lost his job at a car dealership. His brother, a computer programmer, has been out of work for more than a year.

"Your confidence level goes down to nothing," said Fiorentino, 53, who has been working since he was 18 years old. "You go to interviews, but it's almost like the lottery. There are so many people looking for jobs.

"I've never been out of work so long. It does something to you, mentally. Then you say, 'Thank God you're still alive,'" he said.

Locally, experienced workers who find themselves unemployed have been turning up in increased numbers at the Jobseekers networking group at Trinity Church in Princeton, said John Pollock, a professor at The College of New Jersey who is a facilitator for the group.

He said attendance has tripled in the past several weeks to more than 20 people at each weekly meeting.

"It used to be a lot of information technology people, but it's people from finance and operational areas, areas I thought would be more secure parts of corporations," Pollock said.

"More and more people are increasingly frustrated. You see people who are really scared," he said.

At the Greater Trenton Behavioral Health Care Center, about a third of the organization's 700 clients are experiencing some new economic stress, CEO John Monahan said.

Of the 25 to 30 calls for appointments the center receives daily, 40 percent are the result of some economic dislocation, he said.

The nonprofit, which charges on a sliding-fee scale, is already serving as many people as it can and has a waiting list, Monahan said.

"I'm not hearing about people jumping off buildings like they did in the Great Depression when the stock market crashed," he said. "But if somebody's out of work for a while there's going to be much more strain on them."

The increase in demand for help coincides with the closing of several hospitals around the state, an increase in charity-care cases and a drop in donations to nonprofits.

Demand is up 20 to 50 percent at individual psychiatric hospitals, emergency services and outpatient programs around the state, said Debra L. Wentz, CEO of the New Jersey Association of Mental Health Agencies in Hamilton.

People who were already struggling to get by are being hit with job losses and foreclosures, which exacerbate existing illness, while people who were doing fine before are coming under new pressure, she said.

Now there's a whole other population that has become anxious and depressed, Wentz said. "Some have mild symptoms and they just need some coping skills, and some have become seriously afflicted, and as a result they're going to need intensive mental health services."

Stimpson said people he sees who have been laid off will often initially think, "'OK, I can find another job.

'Then I start to look around. Oh my God, I can't seem to find a job. I'm going to have to sell my house. Then, oh my God, the house isn't selling, and now I'm bankrupt.' And they become suicidal," Stimpson said.

"If my spouse is telling me, 'You have to get another job, and you have to make a certain amount of money,' the stress is often so strong the marriage breaks apart," Stimpson said.

Symptoms of depression include sleeping problems, not eating properly, pessimism about finding a job and arguing, Stimpson said.

"I'm going to be angry, I'm going to be questioning my ability to get employed," Monahan said. "I'm going to be scared, so there's going to be increased anxiety.

"If I'm feeling threatened because of the loss of employment, then survival instincts come on. I'm more likely to be reactive, more likely to make a mountain out of a molehill," he said.

"People get into arguments about who's going to take the garbage out. Why do that? Something else is going on there," he said.

Jennifer Sharon, a Hamilton resident who was a secretary at an auto dealership until December, said the worst part came immediately after she was laid off.

"For a while I was very depressed. Very depressed. It was really bad. You get up and go to work every day, and now for them to say, 'You're laid off?' What do I do now?" she recalled.

Sharon, 22, said she keeps busy as a nursing student at Mercer County Community College, where she'll finish next January. On the job front, she sends out 10 to 15 resumes a week and has gotten two interviews.

She watches her spending, goes to the gym regularly and feels better than she did in December, she said.

"In a way, it does go away after a little bit," she said. "You start to get into a frustrated stage, like, 'Why am I not getting called back.' It's a mixture. It's like stages."

The world's crazy, but you're fine

One oddly positive side effect of the economic crisis is that it affects everyone.

People understand that not being able to find another job doesn't necessarily mean they're not qualified. It just means there aren't jobs.

It's less thought of as, there's something wrong with me, and more that there's something wrong with our society, Stimpson said.

That has made clients a bit more receptive to Stimpson's basic message that people are much more than their professions, he said.

"I tell people, while the fact they don't have a job is bad, you are not bad. You are as talented as ever. It's hard for people to see that," Stimpson said.

Of course, the most straightforward solution to unhappiness over unemployment is to find a new job.

The Jobseekers group takes a methodical approach, bringing in speakers and encouraging group discussions that aim to improve job-hunting skills, Pollock said.

"Jobseekers helps you understand you are not alone," he said. "There are steps you can take and things you can do that move you toward the possibility of finding jobs."

The best of jobs truly come from networking, Pollock said. "There's going to be someone who likes you and wants to work with you."

Until you get there, the experts offer familiar advice to prevent excessive stress: exercise, eat properly, get enough sleep, communicate, and don't be ashamed to seek help if you need it.

"Meditation. Yoga. Prayer. Talking to friends about it, friends who can listen. Journaling. There are things people do that can reduce the stress, that are easy to do," Monahan said.

While mental health providers say they need more funding to satisfy increased demand, they're still trying to address the fallout from the economic crisis, Wentz said.

Her organization is arranging workshops that advise counselors how to discuss economic issues, so they can help clients understand business cycles, how to talk about money problems with their children, and how to develop a home budget and stick to it.

"This is a phenomenon that we haven't experienced in our lifetimes," said Ira Hammer of H&S Consultants, which is setting up the workshops. "So we need different approaches than how traditional psychotherapy might approach it."